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Before we spend many hours researching a company, we’d like to analyze what hedge funds and billionaire investors think of the stock first. We would like to do so because the elite investors’ consensus returns have been exceptional. The top 30 S&P 500 stocks among hedge funds at the end of September 2014 yielded an average return of 9.5% during the last 12 months ending in October 30. Sixty three percent of these 30 stocks outperformed the market. Although the elite funds occasionally have their duds, such as Micron and Anadarko Petroleum, which fell 50% and 26%, respectively during the same time period, the hedge fund picks seem to work on average. In the following paragraphs, we find out what the billionaire investors and hedge funds think of Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (NYSE:SWK).

Is Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (NYSE:SWK) the right pick for your portfolio? The smart money is betting on the stock. The number of long hedge fund bets rose by 1 lately. Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (NYSE:SWK) was in 32 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2015. There were 31 hedge funds in our database with Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (NYSE:SWK) positions at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity, but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article, we will examine companies such as The Clorox Company (NYSE:CLX), Apache Corporation (NYSE:APA), and Essex Property Trust Inc (NYSE:ESS) to gather more data points.

To most traders, hedge funds are perceived as underperforming, outdated financial vehicles of yesteryear. While there are greater than an 8000 funds trading today, we choose to focus on the masters of this group, approximately 700 funds. These money managers handle most of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by paying attention to their matchless equity investments, Insider Monkey has spotted several investment strategies that have historically outperformed Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 12 percentage points per annum for a decade in their back tests.

What have hedge funds been doing with Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (NYSE:SWK)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 32 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, an increase of 3% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Pzena Investment Management, managed by Richard S. Pzena, holds the most valuable position in Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (NYSE:SWK). Pzena Investment Management has a $302 million position in the stock, comprising 1.9% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Millennium Management, led by Israel Englander, holding a $69 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. The remaining members of the smart money with similar optimism include Robert Polak’s Anchor Bolt Capital, Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management, and Gabriel Plotkin’s Melvin Capital Management.